. >> if you live in san francisco or new york city, it might seem like $250,000 or $300,000 is not very much but listen, in terms of the nation as a whole the median wage is around $50,000. the median family income is close to $58,000. i mean anybody earning over $250,000 is very wealthy in terms of the country as a whole. if you push it up to $400,000, those people between $250,000 and $400,000 are not going to have any tax increase at all. if you push it up above $400,000 toward the $1 million mark, speaker boehner is putting out there, you know, you're going to have a very relatively small tax increase in terms of the number of people affected, very little revenues will be raised relative to what otherwise could be raised. >> eliot: in return for this threshold that's too high, as you just stated, the president is putting social security and medicare on the table. let's begin with social security which we have said over and over. it is simply unrelated to our deficit problem. why is it even on the table? >> should be on the table. social security has been running a surplus for years.